Letters | To fight the coronavirus, Hong Kong should enlist traditional Chinese medicine

Last week President Xi Jinping conferred medals on four Chinese scientist-clinicians who contributed significantly to China’s “people’s war” against Covid-19. The Medal of the Republic, the country’s highest honour, was bestowed on Zhong Nanshan, a prominent respiratory disease expert, and the title “the People’s Hero” was conferred on Zhang Boli, Zhang Dingyu and Chen Wei at a ceremony which took place at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

We salute them for their respective roles in fighting Covid-19. We are particularly pleased to note that Zhang Boli, president of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, was recognised for his team’s treatment scheme which combined traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine.

Hong Kong has three universities that have been educating and training traditional Chinese medicine practitioners for a number of years. However, Hong Kong’s health authority has yet to include any traditional Chinese medicine practitioners in the fight against Covid-19. It is time for the government to speed up the establishment of a traditional Chinese medicine hospital and to review the the Chinese Medicine Ordinance on its scope of practice.